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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Surgery for Type 2 Diabetes with Obesity?

Who would have thought that the most effective available treatment of a metabolic medical disease (that is, type 2 diabetes) could be a surgical solution? A new study in JAMA showed that patients who have type 2 diabetes and who are obese, were far more able to come off their diabetic medications than those who were treated by non-surgical means.

From Melbourne, Australia, an article titled "Adjustable Gastric Banding and Conventional Therapy for Type 2 Diabetes - A Randomized Controlled Trial" is published in the January 23, 2008 of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The aim of the study is to determine if weight loss surgery resulted in better control of type 2 diabetes than medical (non-surgical) approaches to weight loss and diabetes control. Among 55 patients who completed the follow-up (out of 60 patients), remission of type 2 diabetes was achieved by 73% in the surgical group and 13% in the non-surgical group. In this study, the surgical procedure was laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (Lap Band). Remission meant being able to keep normal diabetic blood tests while not taking diabetes medications anymore. Please notice that the participants' BMI was more than 30 and less than 40. So, the surgeons accepted lower BMI than the usual cut-off of BMI of 35 that is mostly recommended. Furthermore, the study excluded BMI above 40.

This study adds to other pointers from previous research. Dr. Henry Buchwald in his frequently quoted study: "Bariatric Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis" reported that weight loss surgery resulted in complete resolution of type 2 diabetes in 76.8% of patients. To my knowledge, not a single conventional non-surgical treatment of diabetes reported anything even close.